Chapter Text
"Crepus."
The anger creeping into his guest's voice was not lost on the man. The grip on his arm only tightened, keeping him from moving it. The Delusion and the glove it was attached to was held tightly in Crepus' hand, refusing to relinquish it.
The other redhead leaned into him, his eyes like gleaming daggers made of amethyst. "You don't know what you're getting into." The man warned him. Crepus was not surprised that he knew. Simone always seemed to be one step ahead or at least, was always informed of what the Ragnvindrs were up to. Perhaps that was the reason for this untimely visit.
"What other choice do I have?" Crepus spoke back in a composed and steady tone. "You know that I have none." He pulled his arm away and the other man allowed him to do so.
"Simply because you were not able to follow the path of your predecessors?" The gaze on him did not falter in its intensity however. If anything, it grew more scrutinizing by the second. "And yet you're not satisfied with the lot you have in life? Was pushing Diluc to pursue your dreams not enough?"
"Enough with that, Simone!" Crepus interrupted. "This has nothing to do with Diluc. I've raised my boy as well as I could. His dreams aren't mine, and I'm proud that he decided to do what I can't. Achieved what I couldn't."
He briefly looked to the door, waiting to hear if Adelinde or the other servants were approaching. When not even a muffled patter could be heard, he turned his gaze back to his guest. "All my life I've felt lacking. My inability to become a Knight... my wife... and unable to prove myself worthy to receive a Vision-"
Simone slammed a hand against the study table. "And I repeat, you aren't satisfied with what you have? You wish to make your children fatherless? I've seen what those things are capable of. And you..." He pointed at Crepus with a gloved finger. "Are incapable of paying the price it demands. Give it to me and stop this nonsense."
Crepus kept his grip on the Delusion. His hand shook, fearing that the tremors would crack the smooth surface of the orb. Thoughts swirled in his head, frustration rising in his throat. He remembered a time, so long ago it was a memory in tattered sepia, when this same man with his features seemingly frozen in time, held him as a child as if he were his own.
'A shadow that had attached itself to the Ragnvindr House during my father's time.' His grandfather had told him on his deathbed. 'One that will protect us from the shadows as he sees fit. Fickle, like a flame without a master. His business is not ours to pry, but pray that you do not destroy his trust.'
He wanted to honor that. As a child, he saw Simone as infallible and wise. The man had so integrated himself to the Ragnvindr House with nary a suspicion from all the other Monstadt clans or the citizens, and even Crepus found nothing wrong with his 'distant' relative up until his grandfather's confession.
A tiny voice whispered in his ear. If he is something akin to to the adepti of Liyue, what did this seemingly timeless stranger, who has not visited since Diluc's first year, know what it felt like to be lacking and desperate?
His thoughts returned to the present. Crepus looked the man in the eyes and shook his head. "I can't. Please understand, Simone. This is for the best." He answered. He offered the man a smile, as unconvincing as it were. "Don't worry for my sake. I won't use it so needlessly. I have to be able to defend my children and the whole of Mondstadt in some way. I finally have the means to do so."
A heavy silence settled in the room. Neither of the red heads made a move to reply.
"That's some hard cope I'm hearing."
Both men turned to the the young man who had entered the room alongside Simone and had remained quiet up until now. The young man side-eyed the two redheads with a perpetually frowning expression, his short dark blue hair almost covering his eyes.
"Oliver." Simone warned. The young man grumbled and shrugged, but otherwise remained silent thereafter.
The redhead turned his attention back to Crepus. "So you have chosen." He said with a slight cant of his head. "Truly you don't regret your decision?"
Crepus felt something was wrong. But there was no turning back, and neither would his pride as a Ragnvindr allow him to turn back on his words.
"I don't."
"And so have I, and I will not align myself with such folly."
Crepus' face crumpled in surprise. Oliver moved with a single gesture from the other man. He came to hand Simone the fur lined cape he held in his arms.
"Simone?"
The man glanced back at him, his eyes gone cold like dull stones of purple. Somehow in the warm lighting of the study, Simone's short wavy hair appeared much like fire, brighter than the dark red of his own. With the cape over his straightened back, the man appeared imposing, like something otherworldly.
"Consider this my last visit to the House of Ragnvindr." Simone said, his tone as biting cold as the winds of Snezhnaya. "I do not want to be the one to clean up messes that could be avoided altogether."
Crepus did not have words to describe the shiver that ran down his spine at the words. But all he could do was watch, his mouth unable to form the words to call Simone back. The man had made it sound like an ultimatum, turning his back on the House that he had saw fit to protect in ways even Crepus is not aware of. Yet another failure to add to the ledger of his sorrows.
The man's companion closed the door behind him, but not before Crepus heard Simone's parting words.
"Humans, always such greedy creatures."